The most difficult aspect of cleaning surfaces of cooking appliances, especially that of an oven, is to clean baked-on food from the surface of the appliances. However, if the appliance is not cleaned often, the amount of baked-on food can build up rapidly, thereby increasing the cleaning difficulty.
There are several known methods to facilitate the removal of baked-on food from the surfaces of the cooking appliances, such as the interior surfaces of ovens. One of the most widely used methods is pyrolysis or the application of highly alkaline chemical oven cleaners. However, these methods have several disadvantages.
The highly alkaline chemical oven cleaners have the disadvantage of containing significant amounts of caustics, such as sodium hydroxide and/or potassium hydroxide. These caustics, while effective in removing baked-on food, are hazardous to handle. Fumes from such products can irritate the eyes and throat and can also cause chemical skin burns. Further, the resulting product from the cleaners and the baked-on food is also hazardous to handle.
The pyrolysis method, on the other hand, resolves the problem of safety hazards associated with using the highly alkaline chemical cleaners. However, this method also has its own problems. The pyrolysis method is used in “self-cleaning” cycles for many ovens. During pyrolysis, baked-on foods are pyrolyzed (such as oxidized) to carbon ash residue that can be wiped from the interior surfaces of the oven once it cools. However, to be effective, such pyrolytic heating cycles must maintain the temperature inside of the oven above about 500° C. (900° F.) for a period of about 60 minutes. Such heating cycles are very expensive to operate because of the power consumed to generate and maintain the high temperature. The coating on the interior surface of the oven also tends to craze and even flake off when they are repeatedly exposed to such elevated temperatures.